


The Border Dwellers

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: The Far Pavilions - M. M. Kaye
Genre: 1890s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chocolate Box Exchange 2019, Chocolate Box Pinch-hit, F/M, Gen, India, North-West Frontier, Post-Canon, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 11:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17745188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: "...a valley which was to be theirs alone, and where, one day, they would build a house of mud and pinewood, with a flat roof on which they could spread corn and red peppers to dry, and a garden in which they would grow almond and peach trees and keep a goat and a puppy and a kitten..."





	The Border Dwellers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quin/gifts).



> Canon divergence from the original book: Walter Hamilton (Wally) does not die, but is instead saved by Ashok at the end of the defence of the Kabul Residency, during the Second Afghan War. Please note, I've used M. M. Kaye's spelling for words and places. 
> 
>  

There were rugs and cushions piled on the veranda, so that even an old man could settle himself comfortably in the shelter of the house and rest his tired legs, looking at the pinnacles and balconies of the snow-covered mountains, and the green of the valley pastures, and the lake with its tapestry of water-lilies. 

“What are you talking about, Zarin?” said Ashok. “You are no more old than I.”

They were both twenty years older, and Zarin could feel every one of those years in his knees, and the nagging ache of his hips, and his silvered beard. In the beaten bronze of his hand-mirror he looked like his own father, and felt like him too, when Koda Dad had been too old to travel comfortably. It had taken Zarin two months to trek from the fort at Mardun to the hills at Kashmir, and then, braving the border, beyond them, following trails no wider than the span of his mare’s hooves. The heat and dust of of the plain had worn him down into his saddle, and the foothills of the mountains, for all their beauty, had ground at his aching bones as he trekked from valley to pass and back again, feeling his way on unfamiliar ground and in unfamiliar languages. And yet Ashok, the cursed infidel, looked little older than he had when they had last said the words of farewell to each other. The grooves in his face were a little harsher, perhaps, and his eyes deeper-set, and there was a streak of grey in his black hair, but there was an ease and lightness to Ashok’s face Zarin had never seen before in all the years they had known each other. 

He was smiling now. He smiled easily, this Ashok, as if smiles were as easy to give away as marigolds at a wedding. 

“I am both older and wiser than you,” Zarin grumbled, “And more handsome.”

It was an old, old quarrel, yet Ashok laughed at him now as he had never done before, his teeth flashing white and his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I am sure your wife thinks so,” he said, kindly. 

Someone set down a tray at his elbow,the glass cups and bowls chiming against each other. Out of courtesy, Zarin did not look up and shame the mistress of the house with his intrusive gaze, although he could hear the heavy rustle of her warm robes, and the faint perfume of roses mixed with the cardamon-scented steam from the teapot. There were little almond cakes, and a bowl of sweet dried cherries, and a dish of warm water and a towel, as if he were an honoured guest and not a petitioner from another, different life. He murmured his thanks, and then as her footsteps moved away, he raised his voice and said, “You sent us a fine boy, Pelham-Sahib, and we of the Guides will make a man of him for you. But, ah, never have I met a boy with such a sweet tooth. My wife is baking twice a day and the servants are always at the bazaar.”

The footsteps stopped, abruptly, and Ashok’s eyes flashed up.

“Oh, come now,” Zarin says. “A boy arrives from the hills, with his own rifle and horse - aiee! That is a _horse_ \- knowing already what it is he needs to do to become one of us. He speaks and reads _Angrezi_ , although he says the tongue of his boyhood was _Hindu_ , and while he dresses like a Pashtu he could be a sahib by the colour of his skin. Do you think me a fool? Ashok, someone of my father’s lineage taught him his seat on a horse. He has your eyes, and his mother’s hands.”

Behind him, the _Rajkumari_ Anjuli-Bai stirred, so that he could hear the sharp jangle of her gold bracelets, and then was still. The sun was low in the sky, now, so that the snows on the high mountains were beginning to flush pink, and the clouds reflected in the lake were patterned with gold. The air was fresh with the smell of snow, and pine-needles.

“I was hurt,” Zarin said, slowly, and set the glass of tea down. “For we had been brothers, you and I, and yet you would not trust me with your son, when the time came.”

“I had not thought...” Ashok said, and his eyes were veiled, Ashok, who had always been so direct, almost as painfully honest as the _Angrezi_ pretended to be. “I am glad you found space in your heart for our first-born,” he said. 

“My father would have beaten us both around the head until we learned sense,” said Zarin. “I was young, Ashok, and angry, and I should not have spoken to you as I did, on the river, when you knelt to pray with us. It has taken... there is trouble on the plains,” Zarin said. “The Fakirs are stirring up the villages, saying that Allah demands every man own no religion but Islam, while the Hindu priests claim that those of us who worship Allah defile the Motherland, the _Mātaram_...even those of us in the Guides,” Zarin said, painfully, “Even for those of us who count Hindu and Sikh as our comrades and brothers, there have been choices made that... should not have been made.”

“I have heard,” said Ashok. 

“I fear for our country,” Zarin said. “And thus, I fear for myself, also, and it is in my heart now that without tolerance, without respect, there is no moving forward... I am sorry, my brother. I should not have spoken to as I did. There is not...” Zarin said, and swallowed. “Allah says, we are born from a single soul. How then can I deny you your own path to God, whatsoever it may be, and if your footsteps fall alongside mine for some part of that way, should I not welcome you also?” 

Someone, soft-footed, was lighting the oil lamps in the windows, so the soft gold light spilled out across the rich reds and purples of the rugs, and glittered from the tiny mirrors embroidered on the cushions and footstools, and the glass eyes of the head of the bear skin rug. The sun was falling behind the hills, so that darkness embraced the lake shore and it would soon be time for the evening prayers, but the snows of the highest mountains were flushed rose-pink and gold, glorious and triumphant. A man, his footsteps hesitating, was walking up from the lake-shore, singing in broken little snatches of words a song Zarin did not know, and a child’s voice answered. Already, the cool evening air was scented with the white jasmine flowers that curled up the pillars of the veranda.

Ashok, his brother the infidel, stumbled upright, all of his usual grace lost, and reached out. Zarin too, was, he found, on his feet, and then he was in Ashok’s arms, and Ashok in his, alike and yet not alike to the last time they had embraced, for this was a beginning where both of them had thought an end. Ashok was just as wiry as he had been as a boy, and bare-headed, he still had all his hair, while Zarin was just a little thicker around his middle, although who could blame him for that?

“Thank you for looking after our son,” Ashok whispered.

“He is a good boy,” Zarin said. “Fierce. Strong. Like a falcon! But hungry, _afsos_! And also, he writes very badly, but I have letters for you, and his mother, if you would let me go.” Yet he found himself, too, clinging just a moment longer, for he had not known what welcome he would receive here in this hidden valley, although he had known too that word would have reached Ashok along the winding paths long before he himself did. He had been a stranger on a strange horse, and as he had neared the valley it had been clear Ashok’s hand lay over these hill villages, with their bright-eyed children and new-built schools, their water-mills and meeting-halls where the elders might confer. 

“And you,” Ashok said, stepping back, but still smiling, his eyes suspiciously damp. “You are so very welcome. We are starved of gossip, Zarin, you have no idea... “ And then, sharply, “What is it?”

He had been reaching for the letters, safely secured in the breast of his shirt, when he had looked down, and in the light of the windows he had seen a ghost. “ _Wa-wa!_ ” he had exclaimed, as if he was a foolish girl-child and not a man of four-and-forty, snatching for the pistol tucked into his waist-band, as if bullets would stay a spirit. “Ashok!”

His hand had been caught and held, Ashok’s grip as fierce as a lion’s, and Ashok said, “Be still,” just as the ghost turned its face up into the light. The lines of its face were familiar, although its short hair was white, as a ghost’s should be, and there was a scar on its cheek that cut from the corner of its mouth up to and across its forehead, a spear-cut that should have killed. It was wearing a striped shirt, and carrying a fishing-rod, and beside it was a child of five or six, also with a fishing rod, and a very small fish on a hook. 

“Captain-Sahib,” Zarin breathed to himself, shivering, as cold as if the wind had spun down from the highest mountain and brought the ice with it.

“Good evening,” said the ghost politely, blankly, in _Angrezi_. “Ash, Juli, we have brought supper.” Then, switching to Pashtu, the shared language of the hills, it said, “Welcome.” It frowned. “Do I...” it said, with terrible politeness. “Do I know you?”

“No!” said Zarin, explosively, and finally managed to shift Ashok’s hand far enough to get a grip on his knife. 

“No,” whispered Ashok. “Zarin, no, it’s not what you think. Juli!”

“Darlings,” said the _Rajkumari_ Anjuli-Bai, passing them both in a swirl of gleaming black hair and embroidered silks and scent. “ _Baba_ , take Gul Baz the fish, so that it will be cooked in time for supper, and then wash your hands. Wally, you too, come away with me, you knew two days ago we should have a guest and there are clean clothes waiting for you...yes, sweetheart, it is a fish to be proud of, a dolphin among fishes....”

“He is dead, and I am dreaming,” said Zarin blankly. “Or he is a ghost, and I am dreaming. Or he lives, and - Ash, Ash, He died. He died in Kabul.”

“He is not dead,” said Ashok. He let his hand fall from Zarin’s, as his wife, and his long-dead friend, and the child and the fish disappeared into the house. “Although he came very close, and not all of him came back, not enough for him to return to the Guides, for he knew there would have been no home for him there.”

“It is Hamilton-Sahib, is it not?” Zarin pressed. “Tell me I am not dreaming.”

“You are not dreaming,” said Ashok. “But it is a long tale, Zarin. Come: there is warm water for washing, and we have clean clothes for you, too, and I should show you your room before we eat, or Juli will think I have forgotten how to welcome a guest. We have a prayer room too, Gul Baz will show you, there is just time for evening payers if we make haste.”

So it was that Zarin found himself welcomed into Ashok’s house, where there was a room for him, and clean clothes and warm water, and Gul Baz waiting so that they could pray in concordance. There was a shrine, too, in the north-west corner of the house, with its icon of Ganesha and Lakshmi and its gleaming oil-lamps, and on the shelf below the lamps was a pristine copy of the holy book of the _Angrezi_ , their bible. Zarin nodded to these both in acknowledgement, after prayers, and then went through to the main room with its great windows and wide, carpeted floor. Ashok was already there, and a tall, slim girl with her mother’s height and Ashok’s direct gaze, so that Zarin must look away, and in doing so accidentally catch the eyes of the ghost. 

“Ash tells me you and I once served together,” said the ghost. It was smiling, but not as it had used to do when it was alive, this was a small thing. “I am sorry if I do not remember. I was injured, you know.”

“So I hear,” said Zarin, shortly. He looked around, but Ashok was talking to his daughter, and the _Rajkumari_ Anjuli-Bai was fussing with trays and dishes, and Gul Baz was gravely inspecting the hands of the small child who had been so successful with a fishing rod. “They tell stories of you still at Mardun, and in the bazaars of Rawalpindi,” he said, for surely he could say that to a dead man and not incur its enmity.

“Oh, really?” said the ghost. “I say. That’s rather - it’s good to know the Guides are remembered,” he said, and even in the gold light of the lamps he had flushed, his pale skin pinking. “There were so many great men, Havildar Hassan, Hira Singh, Rosie - they fought like lions, and died heroes. To fight alongside such men was an honour and a privilege. To have died alongside them - there was a time when -”

“There is a time when one lays down one’s sword,” said Zarin, who had come to such a time himself. 

“Well, it came a little earlier than I expected,” said the ghost. “And not as I expected, for I really thought, you know, it was my last fight, and I always expected to go out in a blaze of glory, like - like-”

“ _All in the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred,_ ” said Ash.

“Oh, yes!” said the ghost. “Now I remember. _Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!_ although, no one ever writes about what happens when the guns stop, and one’s left to - well, there are other battles.” 

The _Rajkumari_ Anjuli-Bai was so swift and quiet he would almost have missed the way she clasped the ghost’s shoulder, as she passed.

“Wally, it turns out, is an admirable engineer,” said Ash. “We owe him our mill, and all our irrigation systems.”

“It’s just making things work,” said the ghost who had once been the Sahib Lieutenant Walter Hamilton. “Fitting things together. Any fool can do it.”

“Well, I can’t,” said Ash. “I can talk the elders round, but I can’t build the thing, and you know it. If it wasn’t for you, we’d still be grubbing for lotus roots in spring.”

“And I would be quite happy never to eat lotus root again in my life,” said Gul Baz, bringing out the last tray of breads and dahls and curry. “Sahibs, eat, or it will go cold.” 

So they ate, even the women-folk, and talked of lighter things, of the races at Cawnpore, and the best way to grow roses in a mountain valley, and the metre of verse, so that Hamilton-Sahib could declaim for them and Zarin, too, find he had not forgotten the Persian poetry of his boyhood, although the _Rajkumari_ Anjuli-Bai recited the shortest and rudest of limericks so gravely that they were all seized with laughter... “Oh, Ashok,” Zarin said, “I have missed this so...”

“But you have the Guides,” said Ash.

“The Guides are...not as they once were,” said Zarin. “The gap between men and officers is widening, Ashok, and religion itself is a battleground once again. My own son...” and it was then he knew he must grasp this particular thorn. “My own youngest son is – is – more extreme in his opinions than I would like. He is in favour of partition – of completely separating Musselmen and Hindu, as is discussed in Bengal, and he will not listen even to his own father on the subject. He is a good boy, and his mother swears to me that given time, he will learn that others too have voices worth hearing. But it is in listening to Malik that I thought of how I failed to listen to you, Ashok, and then of course there was your son, a young lion, and one who treats every man alike, whatever his religion or the colour of his skin.” It was the right thing to say: the _Rajkumari_ Anjuli-Bai was hiding her smile behind her scarf, and Ashok and the ghost Hamilton-Sahib had straightened with pride. “So I thought to myself, just as you sent your son to us to be schooled, so too could I send you my own, to learn that tolerance is as much a strength as intolerance. If anyone could teach this, it would be you, Ashok, and my father before you... Would you have him, if I sent him to you? He is a good boy at heart, I swear, although he reads far too much poetry...”

Ashok was looking at the _Rajkumari_ Anjuli-Bai. There was a question in his face, and Zarin was suddenly aware, as he had been all evening, of the way that they had managed this evening between them, the care of their guest, the elegant dance of food and drink, the thrust and sway of conversation that included every person in the house and had allocated equal weight to the catching of fish and the writing of poetry and the bearing of arms and the design of a generator for _electric light_ , that had made sure he knew every mouthful he ate was acceptable to Allah and every dish served could be eaten one-handed, for Hamilton-Sahib’s left arm was stiff and unwieldy. And then Ashok looked at Hamilton-Sahib, and Zarin realised he had read this wrong, that there were three pillars of this house, not two, and one of them was smiling, and the other nodded.

“Of course,” said Ashok, as straightforward as he had been twenty years ago, the boy his father had loved and the man he himself had embraced as a brother. “Zarin, of course you must send him to us, how could you think otherwise? He will be welcome for his own sake, and for yours, too.”

“Thank you,” said Zarin. He had not realised how much of a weight he had carried until it lifted. “Thank you.” And then he said, “And, _inshallah_ , it it is my mind that now I have retired, I shall do what I always said I should like to do, and breed horses, as my father did. And the best horse I have seen in the last ten years came from this valley, so-”

Ashok was laughing at him. “We shall keep the guest room aired for you, Zarin, and if you give us a little more notice, we can send for raisins, and make that spiced _roti_ you used to like so much, for now you are an old man, in need of a seat by the fire.”

“Just you wait!” Zarin threatened. “For I have time and a rifle or two to spare, and we shall see at last who is the better shot in the mountains!”

“Oh, no,” said Ashok. “Last time you suggested a hunting trip, we were gone two years!”

“Then you had best take us with you,” suggested the _Rajkumari_ Anjuli-Bai, quietly.

“Really, that’s not a bad idea at all,” said Hamilton-Sahib, his eyes brightening. “I can still pink a bear’s eye at twenty paces with a revolver, you know.”

“I shall air the tents,” said Gul Baz.

“We might see snow-leopards!” said the child who fished. 

“Oh, aba,” breathed the tall, quiet girl. “Might we?”

Ashok closed his eyes and shook his head, but he was smiling, and Zarin found that he, too, did not think this was a bad idea at all. Perhaps Malik would learn some sense, in the clean air of the mountains. “Let me send home first,” he said. “There is a mare I have who might suit your daughter. But when the monsoon has passed and the streams passable, then is the season for travel.”

“Adventure,” added Hamilton-Sahib.

“Pilgrimage,” said the _Rajkumari_ Anjuli-Bai.

“Then we shall go,” Ashok said, taking her hand. He looked at Hamilton-Sahib, and then at Zarin, and his smile was grave and joyous at the same time. “Together. To the very furthest mountain!”


End file.
